About The Futility of Using Words to Describe War

Narrator: Mah Jan

Victims: Abdurrafi, Abdul Wahid

Date of the incident: 1992-1996 (Estimated)

Location of the incident: Kabul City and Logar

War is full of irrationality. It causes deep injuries to the hearts of mothers and fathers and makes them eternally grieve for their lost children. It takes away a happy and prosperous life and replaces it with pain and suffering. Afghanistan is the country of pain, torment and injustice. Its people have become prisoners of the inhumane logic of violence. Here, horrendous atrocities have occurred one after another for many years in every corner of this country, subsequently breaking the spirit of its population and causing serious, unhealed wounds in people’s hearts. With every day that passes, more people lose their lives while the hope for a better future dies a painful death. Why is this happening to this beautiful country? The secret of this puzzle is yet to be found and the dark cloud that has cast its shadow over the population has yet to be removed.

The story of war in Afghanistan is the story of pain and suffering. One of the people who understand this intimately is Mah Jan. She is the perfect image of a war victim. She has lost everything and her mind is like an archive of the endless suffering of the Afghan people. An archive as thick as an encyclopedia that contains every existing story of war ever told.

Mah Jan could be considered the perfect and complete Afghan. She has experienced it all. Only people like her know exactly what tragedy means and what kind of life war brings about. Only people like her can distinguish whether war is something good or bad. She is the face of the Afghan people. She hardly speaks about her pain because she does not trust that anyone is interested in listening to her. However, in the few moments when she does speak out, it is not just words that come out. Mah Jan takes you to another world where words lose their intermediate role. She makes you encounter the naked truth. The words in her mouth lose their verbal nature and her entire body speaks with you. Her face of sadness reveals all the hidden secrets. There is not even a need for her to open her mouth. Her facial lines, languished hands, hollowed eyes, and crushed spirit all speak to you. She speaks to you about her pain in thousands of languages. The words are limited exclusively to express her suffering.

Her disturbed soul does not fit into the framework of words. In her speech, words do not connote any meaning beyond their most basic implications. Her story resembles the metaphor of the ‘speechless dreamer and the deaf.’ Neither is she capable of communicating her painful story nor do we have the ability to truly absorb it.

The Story of Mah Jan

My name is Mah Jan. During the war, I lost two of my sons, my husband, my brother in-law, and a number of my cousins. I lost everything. I was living in Chehil Sutun, Kabul. Later we were displaced to Logar and Khair Kahan. We could not afford to leave the country. One of my sons was killed in Chehil Sutun and the other one in Logar province. I had not seen the latter for three years when I was finally told to go to Logar to see him. I was taken to a cemetery and informed that my son was buried there. As I could not afford to transfer his body to another graveyard, I accepted for him to remain there.

My first son, Abdurrafi, was killed in 1997 and my other son was killed the following year. When I came back from Logar, we first moved to Shiwaki but later we returned to my home in Chehil Sutun as I loved my home. When we moved back, we saw that nothing was left. Everything had been taken, including the doors and windows. Apparently, the people from the checkpoint took them. It was during the Taliban time. One day, I decided to clean the home. I had yet to finish my cleaning when a rocket landed. I became worried about my son as I had just sent him out to buy some things. A few minutes later, my neighbor came and told me that my son had been injured and that I should go to the hospital. It was in the afternoon. I saw my older son on the street and he asked me what had happened. I told him that Abdul Wahid had been injured. He began to cry and the two of us went to the hospital in Allawoddin. As we entered the main corridor of the hospital, I saw a dead body. I stopped and uncovered his face. His shoes were placed under his head. I realized that it was my son. I cleaned his blood with my chadari and we took him home. It was late afternoon. The whole night I cried and cried. I lost two of my sons. Two months later, my brother in-law was killed in Ghazni. He was working there. My husband buried his sons and brother. He was going every now and then to cry over their graves until he got paralyzed. For six years he could not move until he finally died. I took care of him. I washed him two times a week and gave him food every day. I lost two of my sons, my husband, and my brother-in-law. A widowed woman married my third son and then they disappeared.

I never saw him again. I now have only one son with whom I currently live. He has a shop. Every day he works hard to feed us. I used to work in other peoples' homes as a cleaner and caretaker. I did all kind of work to support my family. My first son was 18 or 19-years-old when he was killed. The second was only 16-years-old. The younger one used to work in a shop and sometimes he collected food from the trash cans and brought it home for us to eat. After coming back to our home, we used to live in a home without doors and windows. We were in Chehil Sutun when the war intensified. There were checkpoints everywhere so we went to Shiwaki.

My situation further deteriorated when my husband was handicapped after he suffered paralysis. In his last days, I swear to God that we had nothing to eat. Once, I cleaned the flour bag and prepared some bread for him. I mixed it with oil and put in his mouth. Now there are three people left in our home: my son, my daughter, and myself.

There are very few things left behind from my sons. An old shoe from my older son, which is very valuable to me. I have also kept his hat. One of my sons did not even have proper clothes. I am not lying. When he was killed, I bought 7 meters of fabric to cover his body. I took it everywhere but no one accepted to sew it. His clothes were full of blood. When the people took it, he was totally naked.